Harlem: The Making of a Ghetto: Negro New York, 1890-1930

by Gilbert Osofsky

A great many books have been written about Harlem, but for social history none has surpassed Gilbert Osofsky's account of how a pleasant, pastoral upper-middle-class suburb of Manhattan turned into an appalling black slum within forty years. Mr. Osofsky sets his chronicle against the background of pre-Harlem black life in New York City and in the context of the radical changes in race relations in America in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He traces Harlem's change to the largest segregated neighborhood in the nation and then its fall to a slum. Throughout he neatly balances statistics and humanly revealing details. "A careful and important study.... Osofsky at once takes his place alongside James Weldon Johnson, Claude McKay, and others who have looked at Harlem at close range."―John Hope Franklin. "A pioneering scholarly achievement.... Although the subject engages his compassion, his presentation is rigorously straightforward and unsentimental and therefore all the more valuable as social analysis."― New York Times Book Review

Genres: History, Nonfiction, New York, African American, Race, Sociology, Cities

300 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1971

Reviews

[Chanel · Rating 4 out of 5]

While this book was full of facts and informative, it was extremely sad. The book chronicles Harlem beginnings with white residents and how it descended into dirty tenements for black residents. The author defines the poverty that begin in the 1900's and how it prevails today.

The problems are vast and the solutions are few.

[Greg · Rating 4 out of 5]

A pretty solid accounting of Harlem history and other Black parts of Manhattan. If you are the least bit interested in present-day housing rights, gentrification and displacement, this is a very prescient book.

Lots of interesting tidbits I was otherwise unaware of such as Abyssinian Baptist Church's origins in the Village. I didn't know Greenwich Village had a very large Black population at any point in time.

[Daahoud Asante · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have a different cover , i enjoyed this first hand account of the transition of a well known borough of NYC. Eye opening

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was written in the early 1960s, so may seem a bit out of date, but Gilbert Osofsky's excellent social history of New York's Harlem neighborhood still has much to teach us. The book covers primarily the years from 1890 to 1930, but touches more briefly on earlier decades and casts its net far beyond New York City.

Those who became familiar with Harlem at mid-century, a crowded, poor, African-American neighborhood, but at the same time a neighborhood with a vibrant art and cultural life, may be surprised that it was once a suburban enclave of large, expensive homes for well-off white people. It's transformation, over several decades, is the subject of the book. It is very well-researched, with much statistical analysis, and describes well how oppressive conditions in the Jim Crow south, and the impossibility of making a decent living as an agricultural laborer, inspired many to migrate north in the hope of finding a better life. Many found that, after the journey, they were limited to careers in menial occupations that were reserved for blacks, such as janitors, porters, and domestic workers. Even in areas that were highly industrialized, racially restrictive union practices barred black workers from better-paying jobs. Population booms resulting from migration, restrictive housing practices and widespread speculation in real estate limited minorities to certain neighborhoods. African-Americans were initially present in small pockets of neighborhoods, but white flight soon led to nearly all-black neighborhoods in areas where housing deteriorated, but still generated high rental income for absentee landlords. It is a familiar story in the U.S., in both housing and schools. Whites will tolerate black presence in their neighborhoods or schools only up to a certain point. When the numbers become too high for whites to tolerate, they simply leave, and segregated neighborhoods are the result.

The author does an excellent job of analyzing the many factors that contribute to creation of a poor, segregated neighborhood, and the book has many examples of how individuals fought to improve their situations, some successfully, many others not. There is also a long section describing individuals and groups who worked to improve the lives of the less fortunate, and how some of the improvements they made changed lives. Some of those organizations continue to exist.

I read this as Harlem is undergoing yet another change, this time gentrification which has resulted in well-off whites pushing poorer blacks out of what has become pricy Manhattan real estate into other areas. The lack of affordable housing is a huge problem today and Osofsky's book is a reminder that such conditions have persisted for many decades with very little progress being made in improving the circumstances of the poorer members of our society.

Well worth reading.

[Bob Newman · Rating 5 out of 5]

The story up to 1930

Harlem has been famous for a long time as the African-American section of New York, a center of music, literature, drugs and crime, in fact, a world in itself. But it has a whole history of its own, only partly tied to the rest of the city. Though it has been a ghetto for years, it was not always thus.

This book is no literary flight, it is a compilation of facts and figures that tell how Harlem changed from a Dutch country village separated from New Amsterdam in lower Manhattan by several miles to a pleasant suburb on New York’s outer limits inhabited solely by white people. From there, as the city continually grew, it became a field for real estate speculation in the 1880s and ‘90s. Grand mansions and luxury apartment projects abounded. A bust in the property market brought that phase to an end in 1904-05. Rents suddenly became cheaper. African-Americans, who then lived in several other neighborhoods scattered around the lower city, moved in because the landlords couldn’t find enough tenants for the stock of housing that existed. At the same time, the great migration of African-Americans from the South occurred. The result was that by World War I, Harlem had turned into an overcrowded slum, the most densely-inhabited area of the USA. “Harlem was originally not a slum, but an ideal place in which to live.” (p.111) It became a ghetto and for most inhabitants, not ideal. Employment was hard to find and limited to a narrow range of the whole spectrum. While white night-clubbers flocked to Harlem for jazz and its storied night life, for most people there, life was tough. Racial discrimination was rampant throughout America and “….it was impossible to mobilize any massive support for racial reform in the 1920s because American society voluntarily blinded itself to the harsh realities of Negro existence.” (p.151) [*as the book was published in 1963, the word “Negro” was the only choice available then.] Harlem stereotypes abounded. Reality was ignored or unknown to the wider society.

Beyond a history of how Harlem developed, the book also discusses living conditions, health, cultural life, and how politics developed as Harlem residents began to realize their voting power. He relates the stories of a few successful characters in the period up to 1930. Social and economic change was slow, but political change proved rapid. A lot has changed over the last 90 years, but some things still remain the same. Perhaps the story of Harlem is not a weathervane of just African-American life, but in some way an indicator of how much or how little things have changed in America overall.

[Chiantelle · Rating 5 out of 5]

I got it to understand gentrification and where it began. It’s a confirmation that this land isn’t “our” land it’s their and they’ll continue to push us to the slums for as long as they can.

~
“Most negros were jammed together in Harlem”
Now we are just separating middle from upper class. What will happen when there’s no where they can move us?

[Chet Taranowski · Rating 3 out of 5]

Although the book was written in the early 1960s and may be considered dated, it contains some valuable historical information. I didn't know of the conflict between Irish Immigrants and African Americans, or the conditions in Harlem, before the Great Migration.

[Anish · Rating 3 out of 5]

If you're interested in interracial community interaction, this is a good book to read. The author is African American and his account is an eye-opener in terms of how Harlem came to be a ghetto. I do believe that opportunity and environment play a role in the destruction of a community, but I felt like parts to his argument are certainly subject to bias and blame shifting.

[Bob]

author is not black